A Lesson From An Ape

“Let us not pass judgment on one another” (Romans 14:13)

It was 1996 at the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago.  A 3-year-old boy had slipped away from his mother, climbed over the railing of the gorilla enclosure, and plummeted down into the beast’s domain.  The fall knocked him unconscious and left him bleeding and unable to move.  Inside that enclosure was an 8-year-old, 150-pound female gorilla named Binti Jua.  As the mother and crowds screamed with panic, Binti slowly approached the boy.  The mother feared the worst, but to the surprise of everyone, Binti gently picked up the boy and cradled him, checking his wounds.  She then carefully lifted him into her arms and carried him to the door where the zookeepers could reach him.  She even carried her own baby on her back while she attended to the child.

The boy survived, with minor injuries.  But the real story of this incident was the gorilla named Binti.  This gorilla became a symbol of tender gentleness from an animal with such wild strength.  The instinct of this ape was not an impulse to harm, but to give compassion.  She didn’t see her trespasser as one different from her who needed to be destroyed.  She looked upon the boy as a child who needed caring for.  She saw human beings glaring down into her enclosure daily, but none of them had ever come down to visit her before.  And this one that had invaded her territory was small and wounded.  So, the gorilla Binti had a heart filled with compassion toward one that was very different from herself.

Every day you and I have the potential to meet and interact with those who are different from ourselves.  Different looks, different backgrounds, different values.  How do we treat them?  Do we cringe at them and judge them as strange – not our kind of people?  Or do we extend love and compassion to them?  Just like that little boy who fell into Binti’s gorilla enclosure, people will fall into our lives on a regular basis.  They too, like the child, will be wounded.  Perhaps not physically, but emotionally or spiritually wounded.  What sort of compassion are we going to extend to them?  May we each learn a lesson from an ape named Binti.   

                                                           Darlene